On a Limb
by BelieveItOrNot
Summary: What happens when you find your first boyfriend at eleven? Can it last forever? That was how old I was when I first met Edward. We met in a tree. A bi-yearly journey through the relationship of a girl and boy who might be meant to be. AH, Bella/Edward
1. Eleven

**Sorry if you've received this a second time.** My story mysteriously disappeared. Poof!

So I've started over. Lost some of your beautiful reviews, but I have them in my email. :)

Also, if you added this story to your favorites or alerts, you'll have to redo that.

This story originated as a one-shot for the_ Fandom For Twi-Fan G_ compilation, but it grew too big, way past the word limit. So I wrote a different story for the compilation and decided to post this one as a four part novella.

Myimm0rtal is my wonderful beta. Dragonfly336, Dreaminginnorweigen, Ireen H, moirae, and thimbles are my crazy, late-night writing motivators.

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On a Limb

~~Eleven~~

I was eleven when I had my first boyfriend. We met in a tree. Well, he was in a tree.

Its leaves were late-summer shimmery green, some yellow. I counted four yellow ones before I noticed there was a boy hidden in the branches.

"Girl," he said from way up high. "Girl!" I didn't know why he was calling to me in loud whispers.

Hands on my hips, squints in my eyes, I looked up. "I'm Bella."

Behind the tree peeked the kind of sky that looked like the lightest blue Crayola rubbed all over paper. A hot wind shook the leaves. Yellow and green rustled together.

"Shh. Come up here."

I glanced past the rosebush path to the back of my new house, where, through the sliding glass door, I could see my parents in the living room, arching their backs, carting boxes in front of them like pregnant bellies. I was supposed to be helping.

I whispered as loud as I could. "Why are you whispering?"

"Are you coming up or not?"

"I can't come up." I lifted the end of my dress. "I'm _wearing_ a _dress_." It was my moving day dress—white with blue and yellow flowers. My mom called it a ditsy pattern; I called it pretty.

"Stay down there then. But you're gonna miss it."

"Miss what?" I looked for a branch I could reach and tugged. It seemed sturdy enough. I hoisted myself up, my dress flying in the wind. Throwing a hand back, I caught it, holding the thin material close to my thighs, and waited for the breeze to die away.

I stretched for the next branch, and then the next. He was up high. I told myself not to look down, but then I did and felt dizzy. I lifted my head; he was still five or six branches above me.

"How did you get so high?" I was still whispering, even though I had no idea why the whisper was important.

"Don't worry. It's safe."

I gave him a frown and a lip-pursing. How could he say that? I'd break my leg, probably both of them, if I fell.

That was when I knew he was crazy.

When I was one branch below him, he lent me his hand to help me up the rest of the way. It was a little bit sticky, with sweat maybe, hopefully not sap.

"Don't let go," I said, stepping on a rickety limb. I didn't like the way I was bouncing. It made me gasp.

"Shh," he said, and I glared at him.

Finally I was sitting beside him, my feet dangling. Dirt marks stood out against his pale face, and his breath smelled like red licorice and sweet-stripes gum. His messy hair was the color of acorns, but his eyes were as green as the leaves of the tree. Only tiny patches of the sky could be seen from under here. It was like being inside but out at the same time. I wondered if we'd even get wet if it rained. The leaves shook around us; his eyes shimmered.

I didn't remember ever noticing eyes before. But his I wouldn't forget. They were pretty.

If my eyes were pretty, nobody had ever told me so.

What could I compare my eye color to? The tree trunk, dirt, my hair. That's probably the best. My eyes were the same color as my hair.

"Look." He pointed to the branch across from us. There was a nest with four tiny eggs the color of the sky, a split in one. "They're hatching."

This time when I gasped, it was quiet, and my eyes widened and my fingernails worked their way in between my teeth.

One of the eggs was shaking, and the crack was widening, and it was nothing I'd ever seen before. I almost cried. And I didn't even realize I was still holding the boy's hand until I squeezed it and he squeezed back.

"Where's their mom?" I said in a whisper quieter than ever before.

"I don't know."

"What if they all hatch before she comes back?"

"I don't know."

"Will she come back if we're here?"

"What if she never comes back?" he asked.

"They might fall. They'll die."

The crack began to widen more and I saw tiny pinkish-redness inside, wiggling and pushing. And all of a sudden there was the head, all twisted around, wearing the top of the eggshell like a hat, and it stilled for a little while, and I wasn't breathing. And then it shook and pushed some more and something came out that looked like a pointy sharp finger but I guessed was a wing. And the bird pushed and jerked and used its wing to push harder, and then stilled again. Being born was a tiring thing.

The boy and I waited, hands squeezing.

We looked at each other and I had tears dripping and I wasn't even embarrassed about it.

"Don't cry," he said, but he was crying, too. I saw the tears fall before he swiped them.

That was when I knew he was sweet.

"We should go in case the mom comes back," he said and swooped down easily branch after branch like a monkey.

I began to climb down, too, but climbing down was scarier for me than climbing up had been. I took my time and the boy was growing impatient. I ignored his complaints until he said, "I can see up your dress."

This time when I gasped it was the loudest, and I let go of the branch with one arm to hold my dress, but my foot slipped and then I slipped, only holding on to the tree with a bent arm. My gasp turned into a scream.

"Whoa, whoa," I heard him say below me. "I was just kidding. Hold on. Don't do that again."

I swung my free arm back up to the branch and I regained my footing on the lower branch.

From then on, I imagined the tree's limbs to be arms, moving under me where I needed them to be. I had no more trouble and no more fear. The tree was taking care of me.

When I got closer to the ground, he put his hands on my waist and told me to jump. I tried to kick him away.

"Jump," he said again. I let go and he caught me, tripping backwards and lowering me to the ground.

"Why did you do that? Why did you say you could see my underwear if you couldn't?"

"Trying to hurry you." He shrugged at me. I could've fallen and cracked my skull, and all he could do was lift his shoulders? I pushed him.

"Hey," he said.

"I'm never going up in that tree again!"

"Yes, you will." The look on his face was smug.

That was when I knew he was a jerk.

I spun around and stomped off like some baby. But I wanted my stomping feet to show him how mad I was.

"Where are you going?" His voice was light; he sounded amused.

"Inside to help my parents." My voice was hard, brisk.

"Wait. Wait."

I stopped and he circled around in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders. We were the same height.

"Are you really mad?"

I didn't answer.

"You are. You're mad." He was smiling the type of smile that makes it hard to stay mad. "I order you not to be mad at me."

"You can't order me."

"I'm older, so I can."

"How old are you?"

"Twelve."

I huffed giving him my folded arms, tilted head, and narrowed eyes look. "Why were you in my tree in the first place, anyway?"

"That's not your tree. It's my tree." He pointed next door. "I live there."

"Still, that tree is on our property."

"No, it isn't." His smile turned into a smirk. "You said you're never going up again, so why do you care?"

"I might change my mind." I tried to make my face as smug as his. I tightened my lips and raised my eyebrows.

He said that if I met him in the tree again tomorrow, we could share ownership. I knew it didn't matter who owned the tree, but I agreed anyway.

As I opened the sliding door to my house, he called to me. "You're wearing pink underwear."

My head snapped back to him and he was running away. I rushed inside to my new room, boxes all over the place, and lifted my dress and then breathed relief. My panties were blue.

That was when I knew he was a liar.

Our town had one market-restaurant-bar, one school, and one church that was called The Little Brown Church_._Aside from religious events, other types of events were held at that church—parties, school dances, bridal showers, town meetings. Whatever you could think of that needed a building, that was the building. And way up in the canyon, too far to walk, with a view of trees spread over the canyon below so close together they looked like green cloud tufts you could skip across the tops of, was a vineyard, the fanciest place in town.

In our house, down the canyon from The Little Brown Church and slightly up the canyon from the school, my parents were arguing about where to put the couch. My dad wanted it up against the wall in front of the window. My mom wanted it facing the window.

"Where will we put the TV?"

"Who_ cares_ about the TV?"

"I do," I said from the kitchen, licking donut powder from my fingers. There was no table yet so I was sitting on the floor**.** I wasn't usually allowed donuts except on special occasions, but today was a busy one, and we didn't really have any food yet. Or a refrigerator. The fridge was supposed to be coming today. We had milk and sodas and beer in the cool chest I was using as a table.

"That's my girl," my dad said.

The kitchen area was so open that it may as well have been a part of the living room.

"Don't bring her into this!" my mother said. I tuned them out, picking another powdered donut from the box. I wouldn't think about this until I was older, but eventually I came to understand that when adults argue, they're not really always arguing about what their mouths are saying. In other words, neither of them really cared that much where the couch ended up. This argument was about the move. My mom never wanted to move. My dad did. And since he was the one with the sheriff job, and the money, we no longer lived in Arizona, but in this tiny country California town, where even at its hottest was nowhere near as hot as Phoenix.

I left them to argue and went out to meet the boy in the tree. And I met him there the next day, and the next day after that, and by that time I knew his name was Edward. And he didn't like Ed or Eddie. Just Edward. As if he was a man who wore suits and ties every day. And he told me that both of his parents were writers; his dad wrote children's books and his mom wrote porn. Then when his mom and dad came over to bring us fresh-baked neighbor-welcoming bread, they introduced themselves as Carlisle and Esme Cullen and said they both taught at a local community college. Mr. Cullen taught science and Mrs. Cullen taught algebra.

I eyed Edward, who was laughing.

"Liar," I said too loud, and I was the one who got disgusted looks, who was reminded by my parents to mind my manners.

We were in the tree again, the tree that had become ours on my second day in this town. Except for one time when Edward went all the way up high to count the birds, to make sure all four were alive, we no longer climbed up to the nest. We didn't want to scare them or keep the mother away. We could hear them every once in awhile, baby chirps, and we'd smile at each other. They weren't ours, but they felt like it.

It had been two weeks, now, since I'd moved into the house next door to him. All our furniture and most of our stuff was put away, except for some random boxes here and there and a bunch in the garage that looked like they might just live there forever.

School would start in another week and I had no friends except for Edward. This made me nervous. Edward had lived here his whole life; he had an elephant's weight worth of friends; he didn't need me like I needed him.

"You shouldn't bite your nails."

"Why not?"

Our branch wobbled when he took my hand, lifting it to my face to show me why I shouldn't bite my nails. My fingers were dirty underneath the nails, probably from my climb up the tree. I yanked my hand away from him.

"You should stop telling me what to do."

"You don't like me."

I didn't answer. Sometimes I didn't like him, but most of the time, I did.

"Do you or not? Just say it."

He wasn't smiling and his eyebrows were a little stiff-looking and he looked like, depending on my answer, his face could either continue to harden or relax into a smile.

And in this moment, the look on his face dependent on my answer, I liked him. I really did. So I nodded and he did smile, even if it was a small one. And then he lowered his head, his eyes lifting to me. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

I felt my face grow hotter and hotter._ A boyfriend?_ I was eleven. I kind of liked boys, and Edward was so cute. But a boyfriend? My face was boiling with embarrassment. That was teenager stuff. That was... that was... that scared me.

"No?" His eyebrows rose and then a corner of his mouth followed.

I shook my head.

"You should be my girlfriend, then."

Speechless. Now I knew what it meant to be speechless. I'd heard people claim speechless on TV, read about people feeling speechless in books, but I never believed it. There were always words to say. Until now.

"Okay?"

"Mm-hmm." That was how I answered. I didn't say yes or okay or even no. I made a sound of agreement, and it did not even include eye contact. I would learn pretty fast that that was what to expect from girlfriend me. Unsure and shy. Frazzled. I could hardly recognize myself in moments like those. It was easier when he made me mad. But when he was sweet like this, there was no anger anywhere.

"But what do we do? We can't go on dates." I knew my parents would never allow that, not in a billion years.

"We hang out."

I didn't see how that was any different from what we had been doing.

"And sometimes kiss."

My head sprung up like it was catapulted. I made eye contact.

"Sometimes," he said. And there it was again, his quarter-smile. He was the only person I knew who could smile with just one corner of his mouth. And his left eye kind of squinted with it. And I thought that if he asked me now, I would let him kiss me.

It was a new thing, my parents' fighting. And it was my new thing when they got too loud to go out to the tree. Edward wasn't always there when I went, so I'd begun to bring a book with me. I carried my book against my chest, past the spotted-leafed rose bushes that needed pruning**—**the roses all over were browning or brown already, petals falling to the ground. Late September, and still so hot, the lawn was browning, too. We just learned our sprinklers didn't work so we had this one that attached to the hose that my mom or dad, or sometimes I, moved around the yard to try to wet everything. But it was all so thirsty, still. And my mom and dad seemed to stop caring.

Everyone at school knew that I was Edward's girlfriend. When the whole school, kindergarten through eighth grade, has under two hundred kids, it's almost impossible to keep anything a secret. And we weren't exactly keeping this a secret. Because so many of the girls had a crush on Edward, it was hard to get them to like me. That didn't stop them from asking me about Edward, though. Didn't I think he was so cute, didn't I like the freckles on his nose, and the dimple in his cheek, and his eyes?

I said yes to all their questions.

Up in the tree, I looked at those features closely, his freckles, his dimple, his eyes.

"Do you want a kiss?" he asked, and I felt his breath on my nose.

I flinched a little, not realizing I'd been staring so close. "No."

"Are you scared?"

"No," I said, too fast. I was scared. My heart was Thumper's foot.

"Come on. It's no big deal."

Not a big deal? Kisses were for moms and dads and even then it was only cheek kisses.

"Do you want to?" he asked, his lips coming closer and he pressed them to mine, holding them there. His were a little wet. I closed my eyes because I thought I should. I pressed against his lips too because I thought I should. And I waited to see what he did next. When he pulled his lips away there was the slightest suction and my eyes didn't want to open, my fingers floating up to cover my mouth.

"Not that bad, was it?"

Eyes still closed, I shook my head.

"Bella?"

I let my eyes blink open and the sunlight sneaking between leaves burnt them to a squint. "Have you kissed anyone before?" I asked.

"Sure I have."

"You have?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"No."

I sighed and shook my head at him. "You're such a liar. You should write stories."

"I do." He picked up my book and looked at the cover. It was _Tuck, Everlasting_. "But I don't write about girls and kissing. So you probably wouldn't like it."

I grabbed my book from him. "This one isn't about that. It's about living forever, and never changing or growing up, and if you would choose to if you could, even though you had to keep it a secret and everyone else you know and love would die."

He took my book again and flipped through the pages, but didn't say anything. I thought he wanted to read it, and I gave him back one of his own smirks.

"What do you write about, then?" I cocked my head at him like a bird.

He didn't want to tell me. He sat back against the tree trunk, crossing his arms in front of him and shook his head. And the more I asked him, the more he refused.

Finally I said that if he didn't tell me what his stories were about I'd assume they were about kissing, and only kissing.

"All right, I'll tell you." He swung a leg over the branch so he was sitting on it like it was a horse, leaning against his hands in front of him as if holding on to the saddle. "But you can't laugh and you can't tell anyone else." He brought his face close to mine like he might kiss me again, and he held his pinky out. "Do you promise?" His eyes were right on mine. I took a breath.

"Promise." I linked my pinky with his and we shook.

"Okay." He leaned back again. "I write about creatures who look human but aren't." His voice got quieter. "And some have one eye, or a hunched back, and some are trolls."

"Are any of them people?"

"Some are."

"What happens?"

"The creatures that are the ugliest look evil, and the people think they're evil and banish them from their village, but really they're not. Evil. They're..."

"They're what?"

"Lonely."

I pulled my lips into my mouth, thinking about that. That was something I wanted to read, but I wasn't sure if I wanted Edward to know this. "That sounds romantic," I said, and laughed, even though I'd promised not to, just so I could be like a bug worming my way under his skin, and it worked.

He climbed out of the tree and I felt bad. I really hurt his feelings. Like, really. Because actually that story sounded beautiful.

"I want to read it sometime," I called down to him, but he didn't turn back or answer.

I climbed out of the tree by myself.

The following day we were lined up outside our homeroom portables, sixth graders in our line, seventh graders yards away in theirs. I was toward the end of the sixth grade line. Bree, whose family owned the vineyard, and who I'd come to know as one of the smartest kids in our class as well as Queen Bee of the sixth grade girls, and Rina, her worker bee, came up to me with big excited smiles, holding hands.

"Edward wants to break up with you," said Bree, still smiling.

I glanced at Rina; she wasn't smiling anymore and she wasn't meeting my eyes either. She looked uncomfortable and like the concrete was something she'd never seen before and she was trying to figure out how it got there and what it was made of. I looked back at Bree.

Maybe I should have told them to mind their own business.

"Okay," I said, and as the girls went away my gaze floated over to Edward, standing toward the front of his line. He was looking at me in a way I'd never seen before. He didn't look sad and he didn't look glad; he looked scared, maybe. A little wide-eyed. And he wasn't looking away. I felt tears pricking at my eyes like needles so I turned my face straight ahead.

I thought,_ But we watched the baby robin birth together_, as if it had really meant something. And it had. To me.

I was quick to catch the tear that bled.

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A/N: Thanks for reading! :)

Next chapter: Thirteen


	2. Thirteen

On a Limb

~~Thirteen~~

I'd decided I would not be Edward's girlfriend again in a million years, not even if he could make gold flakes blow with the wind, or diamonds drop with the rain, or pearls fall with the snow. It was the way he broke up with me. The way the girls told me, excitement shooting from their eyes like fireworks. I'd never forget their smiles before Rina looked down. It had cracked me like an eggshell. Edward, always trying to be my boyfriend again, would give in for a while, months at a time, but he would eventually start back up. And that first time he said he wanted to be my boyfriend again I'd asked him why he broke up with me at all. He said that it was because too many people knew about us.

I didn't really understand that, didn't understand why it mattered who knew or didn't know.

"They just asked me," he said, sitting on the back of his dad's pick-up. "They kept asking me, 'Don't you want to break up with her?' and that one time they asked, I was mad at you so I said yes. Even though I didn't mean it." He leaned back on his hands, his leg nudging me, his face teasing, _Take me back._

I looked away.

I didn't tell him about how happy those girls had been while my heart was falling.

~13~

I had new things to worry about now that I was a teenager. My mom might have kept calling me a preteen, but I told her she was in denial. Thirteen was a teen, nothing "pre" about it. That was like saying twenty-three was pre-twenty, or thirty-three was pre-thirty, or forty-three (like my mom) was pre-forty (she wished).

I worried about bras showing through clothes now, and certain times of the month, and hair that kept growing back in places where I really didn't think hair had any business growing. At the same time, I liked shopping for new bras, and shaving my legs and, not only understanding what the other girls were talking about when they talked about Aunt Flo visiting, but also being able to join in on the complaining.

When Angela asked me in the girls' room if I had a pad, I very happily said that yes I did, and handed it over. She told me that her older sister had told her that best friends end up on the same cycle.

"I think we're supposed to be best friends," she had said locking herself into a stall. "It's like fate." She started to pee. "Or something."

I didn't think there were that many people you could feel comfortable talking to while you heard their pee trickling out the way I felt just then with Angela, so I agreed. "Yeah."

~13~

My decision not to let Edward be my boyfriend again didn't keep me from letting him wrap his arm around me when my parents fought. I climbed up the tree during every shouting match, even if I was too old for climbing trees.

Over the last year their bickering had turned into out and out fighting, charging like bulls going after red. They both seemed like they really wanted that red, like their life depended on it. But they couldn't have really wanted it that way. Nobody normal could ever really wish to feel like that. Faces twisted up scary, words shooting at each other like weapons, like knives, in voices that came out like a monster's would, like actual growls. If they would only look in the mirror, if they could only hear themselves.

In the house I walked past them with my hands over my ears. And everyone knows that hands over your ears don't do anything but make a picture of how you feel. A signal to tell someone you're done listening. But you still hear everything.

It didn't matter, anyway. They didn't see me. Eyes on the red.

My mom had recently begun to take things further. When she got really mad, or really frustrated, or really depressed, she started taking off in her car. And I had no idea if she'd ever be back.

The first night she left, I heard the back door slam and the engine start, and I ran over, opened the door, and found that her car was leaving. I chased her car. I called, "Mom!" But she kept going, grinding gravel from the street under her tires.

"She'll be back," my dad said, popping open a beer can as he squished himself down low into his chair. He didn't sound like he believed it.

"I'll always come back to you," my mother said when she did come back and I was tucked away in bed. Some nights she would get into bed with me.

"Just until you fall asleep," she told me. But in the morning she would still be there.

That was how I knew before they told me that their marriage was ending.

~13~

One night, around midnight, Edward joined me in the tree telling me he thought he'd find me there. "Your windows are open. I could hear your parents from my room."

He wriggled around branches to share mine and to put his arm around me. Leaning in, I reached to hold his fingers there over my shoulder. I tried to smile.

We sat like that without talking while the night went on and the wind blew and the leaves waved and the crickets chirped and I shivered.

Somewhere between night and morning, he scooted a tad away from me and straddled the branch. "Sit like this," he said. And I did.

"Move closer," he said. And I did.

He put his forehead to mine and whispered. "Can I kiss you?"

I looked at him and I nodded.

His lips touched mine and they felt different than I remembered them.

"Open your mouth," he said against my lips.

I parted my lips and felt his tongue for a heartbeat or two, and then it was gone and slow lips ended the kiss, but he did the whole thing again, tongue against tongue just for a second, maybe two, and a few kisses later, his tongue rubbed against mine twice and that kiss reached my heart like an arrow. I understood the cupid legend now. I'd been struck. It wasn't until we broke away that I noticed he had his hand cupped over my shoulder and I was holding his forearm like I was clinging to keep from falling, only there was no threat of falling. Not from the tree.

"That was a real kiss," he said, voice raspy. "We didn't know anything before." He grinned at me.

"My parents are getting divorced." I just blurted it out as if my heart wasn't still pounding over a kiss.

"Did they tell you?"

"No, I just know. I know."

"Okay." His eyes went upward and he scratched the side of his head near his eye like he was thinking. "Are you sad?"

"I don't know. It seems normal. Kind of. I want them to stop fighting. The fighting makes me sad."

"I can tell."

In the midnight shadows he looked older and mysterious, and somehow like someone I could depend on, solid like the tree trunk. "I like the way you look in the dark."

He got that sideways smile on his face."So, are you my girlfriend yet?"

I couldn't help my own smile. "What if too many people find out?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Then, yeah. But I order you not to break up with me this time."

He laughed and leaned in to kiss me again and we experimented with our tongues. Sometimes it felt wrong and we laughed and other times it felt so right we both sighed, and something new stirred way down at the bottom of my stomach.

We behaved more like boyfriend-girlfriend this time around. We held hands. He chased me and wrestled me to the ground. He kissed me as much as boys liked to kiss. And I kissed him back as much as girls liked to kiss. Other than at the waist or the side of the ribcage or, occasionally, the hips, there were no roaming hands. It was mostly lips, and all fun.

I got mad at him when he chose to skateboard with his friends rather than climb up the tree with me. And he got mad at me for going to Angela's to watch movies instead of hanging out with him. Sometimes we wouldn't talk for two days. And then, out in front of our houses, we'd catch sight of each other with angry faces that would turn to smiles, and we'd walk toward each other and our lips would meet. Sometimes I would say I was sorry or he would say he was sorry or there would be no apology at all. But the most important thing was, there was never a break-up.

In our school, you couldn't do anything—you couldn't_ live_ your life—without being _known_ for something. I hadn't even gone to kindergarten here and even I knew why Eric Yorkie was called Gold-miner, and I knew why Katie Sanders was called Pants. What I was becoming known for was kissing Edward, and he was becoming known for kissing me. We had to hide between buildings at school and still kids in pairs or groups would sneak around corners to watch us. I decided, after Heidi Dennison became known as Stuffer and then simply Stuff, there were worse things I could be known for than kissing.

~13~

Summer was approaching, the end of seventh grade nearing, and as the days grew longer my parents laid down some rules for me. Except when walking to school, no going near the main road, and no going near the train tracks. Easy. There was everywhere else to go.

Up the canyon a group of us played a shadow game in the woods. Sunlight shone down in patterns and the game went, if you stepped into a patch of sunlight, you died. Edward chased me the most, and I tried to stick to shadows but it was hard to dodge the sun so he caught me easily. Then, when I chased him, he didn't even bother worrying about sun patterns and I yelled out, "You're dead! You're cheating." But he kept running and all of a sudden he dropped down dead, shocking me before I could stop, and he pulled me right down with him.

"I'm not cheating."

We kissed. Me on top of him, until I felt something poke at my leg. I shot up, staring down at him, my eyes going wide. He let his hands fall from my sides and looked away. I darted glances around the area in search of any oglers hiding in shadows or behind trees before I stood and he followed. We both said nothing about it. But I was more careful and more aware of that area below his waist. I prayed nobody had seen. I did not want to become known as the girl who got Edward hard; I could only imagine what kind of name they would come up with for me.

~13~

Two weeks before school let out for the summer, my parents sat me down in the living room, my mom next to me, a hand petting my hair, my dad across from us in his easy chair, and they told me they loved me.

They announced their divorce.

I was ready for it. I didn't cry. I didn't throw a tantrum. I didn't beg for them to stay together or to work it out.

But then my mother said, "You and me, honey, we're moving back to Phoenix." She lifted my hair and let it fall, and she smiled a soft smile at me like she expected me to return it.

_"What?_" And then I cried and threw a tantrum and begged for us to stay. When that didn't work I tried insults.

"You're nothing but a statistic now, you know? Another failed marriage. That's all you are."

"We're people, not numbers," my mom said, her voice too quiet. Why could she yell at my dad but not at me? What was inside of her that was doing this? Some kind of parasite that eats away at love that was once perfectly fine. "If you really look at life like that then everyone in the world would be a statistic. It's ridiculous."

"I'm not moving!" I slammed my door and started packing a suitcase, not for Phoenix, though. For somewhere else. I was running away the way a real thirteen year old girl should.

All packed, I hid the suitcase under my bed. I'd give my parents a chance to fix this before I left. There was still a chance.

Wasn't there?

~13~

"I'm not moving," I told Edward up in our tree. He looked at me like he didn't believe me. "I'm really not."

"Can't you stay here with your dad?" He tucked a finger through the strap of my tank top, giving me a few tugs toward him and then let go, the strap snapping back.

"My dad says he agrees with my mom. That she's more_ apt_ to raise a teenage girl. I should've been a boy."

"You shouldn't have." He touched my shoulder; he shook it a little. "No way."

"In that life, you would've been a girl."

He laughed. "How are you not moving? If your dad won't let you stay?"

"I'm running away."

"To where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere close. Maybe the church. I'll hide there until they learn their lesson."

"Sure," he said, folding his arms, leaning back, making the branch sway. "Hide under a pew."

He was making fun of me. He had a smirk on his face. Did he think this was funny?

"I'll sneak you food. I'll give you a cup to pee in."

"You don't want me to stay."

"What?"

"You want me to go with my mom!"

"You're crazy." He started climbing down from the tree and I followed him. He didn't help me down at the end like he usually did. Everything was changing. I knew it then when he didn't help me. It wasn't just my mom and dad, or me moving. It was Edward, too. All of it.

"You're nothing but a jerk, Edward Cullen." I marched away from him, toward my house.

_"Edward Cullen_?" he called after me. Was that all he had to say?

This time more than two days went by before Edward and I talked again. More than a week. And when we caught sight of each other in front of our houses, I turned in the opposite direction.

I spent more time up the canyon at Angela's than I ever had before.

It wasn't until the moving truck was loaded, as I stood outside of it in a new stupid moving day dress, when Edward finally came up to me. My dad drew the back of the truck to a rumbling close. It was like the truck was growling as it swallowed all of our things.

Edward tapped under my elbow to get my attention and started walking around to the back of my house.

He never checked over his shoulder to see if I was there. He knew I was. He probably felt me the way I felt him before he touched my arm.

He climbed the tree, me following, and he lent me his hand as I made my way up to his branch. I liked the way his hand squeezed mine and pulled, and the way his forearm flexed to help me. I wanted to kiss the inside of his forearm, and the backside of it and his hand and his lips and all over his face.

He pulled me into a hug. Neither of us had said one word. He was the first to talk.

"Hey, Bella. Bella?"

I broke from the hug. "What?"

There was a look in his eyes. They twinkled. And he brought his lips to mine. We kissed for a long time. The longest. While we kissed, tears leaked through my closed eyelids the way rain seeps through invisible cracks. He must've felt them on his face, and still, he kept kissing. But I had to break the kiss because I couldn't breathe, and I smooshed my face into his bony shoulder, getting his shirt all wet. And his hands rubbed around my back.

"I'm going to miss you." I clutched the backsides of his sleeves. "Every day. Every day without you."

"Don't cry," he said, but he was crying, too, into my hair. His chest shook a little bit.

And I was reminded of a similar time, the time with the hatching birds.

Robins and baby birds and nests and tree branches would always make me think of Edward Cullen.

We climbed out of the tree, him first, and he helped me down this time, holding me by the waist, and one hand remained there, at the lowest part of my back. It was a hidden touch. My mom, already in the driver seat, said it was time to get moving. She thought it was a funny pun.

Edward pushed aside my hair and kissed my cheek, even though my mom and dad could have seen if they were watching, and I felt his fingertips on my back until the final second I stepped away from him. It was like if I had never stepped away, his fingers would still be touching me. He wasn't going to stop.

My dad had said goodbye to me the night before, privately in my room. But today's was official. He bear-hugged me, lifting me up, and kissed my cheek, the opposite one that Edward had kissed. So I climbed into the truck with two different kisses with two different meanings, but both the same level of sadness.

When my mother left California, I was forced to go, too, riding shotgun in the moving van. But those ignored boxes stacked in the garage—who knew or cared what was inside—they got to stay. I turned my head as far as I could, watching Edward on the sidewalk as we drove away. And when I couldn't turn any farther, I peered through the side-mirror, and Edward, he was still there watching.

I folded my arms across my chest and said to my mom, "You're ruining my life."


	3. Fifteen

~~Fifteen~~

With lakes, rivers, deserts, and hundreds of miles separating them, my parents had somehow developed matching shadows under their eyes that looked like scars. A year went by before those markings disappeared.

They were both now sleeping better at night. In Arizona I was no longer followed into my dreams by the sound of my mom typing away at her laptop, and in California, I no longer woke to find my dad snoring in his lounger in the living room, empty beer cans scattered around him.

I visited my dad during the summers. He'd remarried this winter and now I had an older step-sister, Rosalie, who was so quiet she could almost be called silent, and who didn't act like a friend, much less a sister. When she spoke to my dad or me, it was only when she had to, and only in mumbling whispers. Seventeen, tall with hair as gold as dead, sun-bleached grass, and eyes as blue as my grandma's toilet water—I had to admit she was beautiful, despite all the dead things or toilets I could compare her to. Edward seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes off her whenever he came around, which was a lot. Each summer we'd pick up where we left off. We never officially broke up but we didn't call each other boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, either. When we were together, we were together, simple.

We'd emailed each other through the school year. His were always short, and ended with "The tree misses you," but what I imagined was Edward climbing up our tree, sitting on a branch, remembering me, missing me. And even though his notes were short, they came with pieces of stories he'd written. I'd print them out and read the story snippings, searching them for anything familiar, any sort of secret message Edward was trying to send, but unless I really reached, unless I turned myself into one of his gargoyles or something, the stories were just his. All him. If I could come up with anything good that came of my move, it would be that I got to read bits of his stories. I had a feeling that if I'd been around, he'd never have shared them with me.

Last year when I returned for the summer, it had been a whole year since I'd seen him, and we'd hugged for a long time on my porch. We stepped back, we stared at each other, and then laughed and ran through my house and out to our tree. When I left that August we counted the months—nine of them—until we'd see each other again. We'd endured an entire year separated, surely we could do nine months. And we did.

This year, as he stood on my front porch, just minutes after I'd finished unpacking, he was so different it stole my breath. His voice had deepened even more. Instead of simply being taller than me, he was now two heads taller than me, and not only did he look different, the way he looked at _me_ was different. There was a gleam in his eyes, like instead of simply looking at me, his eyes were hovering over me. A stare that could envelop. Like Dorothy's twister. Leaving me dizzy, barely on my feet, barely in my world.

"You changed," I forced out, as if a person's voice could actually forget how to work.

"So did you."

I pulled some of my hair over my shoulder.

"Your hair's the same." He gave the ends of it a light tug, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. His hair wasn't the same. It was more combed now. I wanted to shake my fingers through it to make it look like a tree-climbing mess again. His eyebrows were thicker, and they brightened his eyes. I searched for something that was exactly like it had been, but I couldn't find it. Even his freckles seemed lighter, fewer. Maybe if he smiled his dimple would be there at the bottom of his cheek. I swallowed. How could you know someone so well, yet hardly at all?

"So." He was slow to open his arms and I was slow to step into them. They wrapped me as tight as twine. "How ya been?"

I don't think I ever answered. I just held on around his waist, my head against his chest now instead of his shoulder, and I reminded myself he was the same person. "He's Edward," I told myself. Edward.

By the time we let go of each other, the wind had changed direction.

"Do you still climb up to our branch?"

"I write up there sometimes." His fingers moved to his hair, messing it up some, which made me smile.

"Show me something you wrote."

"I'll email it to you after you leave." I was pretty sure he blushed but it was hard to tell with the way he swooped down to kiss my lips. With a deep inhale, his hands tugged at my waist. This kiss moved through me like never before, sinking well past that feeling in my stomach, dropping all the way to my knees. My fingers met at the back of his neck.

A darkness took over his eyes when we parted, not the same dizzying look from a few minutes earlier, but the kind of look that dove into me like a promise straight to the heart. The darkness in them told me he was mine, if not forever, then at least for right now. We were both left winded.

All this newness was never going to stop.

"The tree missed you," he said, and smiled. But it wasn't his whole smile, it was that quarter smile from way back when he was twelve, still there, and I couldn't keep myself from hugging him up tight, like he was a Christmas package and I was the bow.

We didn't run out back to our tree this time, we walked. I held his arm, looking up at him. Just looking. Watching his face and the way the breeze moved his hair and the way he sometimes looked down at me, too, like he was just as relieved to see me as I was to see him.

In the days following, I'd catch him glance down at my hips, my chest, sometimes even my neck or collarbone. And once when he was walking behind me, I turned abruptly to tell him something and I caught his gaze lift fast from my butt. I'd forgotten what I was going to say, folding my lips into my mouth to hide an embarrassed smile.

~15~

"Give her a chance," my dad said to me about Rosalie. "She's been through a hard time."

_And I haven't?_ I was still a decent human being.

Rosalie had closed herself in her bedroom and I knew then, hearing her talk on the phone from the other side of the wall, that she could be loud. Funny how you can live with someone and not know a thing about that person.

Even though it didn't seem like my dad was allowed to tell Rosalie what to do, her mom, Mary, sure told me what to do. Or, what not to do. She said I spent too much time alone with Edward and I was too young for that. He was only allowed to come over if Rosalie was home, too, and my door had to stay open at all times.

That rule didn't mesh well with me, mainly because I liked to keep Edward away from Rosalie.

Edward and I wandered hand-in-hand to the stream where we slipped and stumbled—also hand-in-hand—down a steep rocky hill. Sometimes we'd sit on a big couple of rocks with our feet in the water and talked about everything our minds held that we could possibly get out before we had to head home. And even then, at home in bed, I'd think of things I should've said or wished I'd said or would say next time I saw him. And sometimes, we said nothing, just sat listening to the tinkling of the water. But most times, we followed a path along the stream through a jungled-in area of plants way bigger than us, so dense that even though you could _hear_ the stream right there, you couldn't _see_ a bit of it through the leaves. Except for the dirt path we trudged along, everything was green—all around, above and beside us. Crossing to the other side of the stream, over a wooden bridge that had to be either rebuilt or reinforced every year or so, we found our way under a giant bush, to make out. Birds took turns with their different calls and chirps, some repeating a high-pitched rhythm that seemed to never end. There was something about birds and Edward and me. I was always aware of them when he was around.

The rocks beneath us hurt my back so Edward was the one lying down and I was leaning over the top of him, lips, tongues, hands, fingers. Breath.

It was hard to breathe when his hand fell from my shoulder to cover my breast over my shirt. Barely a touch at all, it still made a quiver run through me.

Curious about how it felt for him, I brought my hand down to the middle of his pants and I pressed, feeling. Feeling for it. There was hardness and he rubbed it up against me. I left my hand there and let him keep rubbing. I felt his breath hot on my neck.

"Will you go under?" he asked, his voice croaking.

"Under?"

"My jeans?" He looked up at me, and I gaped down at him, my eyes like an owl's. "I've never..." I shook my head. "I've never."

"It's okay." He unbuttoned his pants, took my hand and slipped it _under_. "I'll show you." He wrapped his hand around my fingers so that mine were wrapped around him. And I didn't look, couldn't look. It was just my hand. He showed me a rhythm, but when he let go of my hand and left me to do it all on my own I got nervous and stopped moving. He sort of did the moving. He didn't seem like Edward anymore. He seemed like someone else. Noises came from his throat. I'd heard similar sounds sometimes when we kissed but these were deeper, heavier, needier. I liked the sounds he was making so I started moving my hand in the way he showed me.

"Hold a little harder," he said, and I did, and seconds later his noises got more strained while his palm pressed into my back, and warm liquid spread on my hand, and Edward was catching his breath.

I smiled because it seemed easy. Much easier than I thought it was going to be. I reached into the stream by my feet to clean off my hand while Edward calmed down. He let me dry my hands on his shirt.

We kissed.

His eyes were barely open, like his eyelids had weights on them. I wondered if all he could see were his eyelashes. "Do you want me to?" He ran a hand up my leg, up my skirt, slipping in between my thighs.

I took a breath. "Don't you feel all wet in your pants?" I wondered if it felt to him like he actually peed his pants.

He laughed, his palm on my leg. "It feels like I want to change. But-" his fingers moved higher, to the bottom of my pantyline, and they slipped under "-do you want me to?"

"No." I held his wrist, his finger letting go of my panties.

"No, you don't want me to, or no, because you're nervous?"

"Both. Not yet. Not yet, okay?"

"Yeah, Bella. It's okay. Yeah." His hand left my legs, sweeping up over my skirt, to my arm, across my shoulder, higher, to my throat before landing on my face. Holding my cheek, he kissed me.

We had to go home so Edward could change, and we walked back through the path, up the rocky hill to the street, holding hands, and when I leaned against him, his hand dropped mine so his arm could wrap around me and we were close. Closer than we'd ever been. And when you're that close to somebody, that close, nobody else in the world exists.

~15~

The next day when Angela came over, she tried to talk to Rosalie, but all Rosalie said was, "Someone ate the last apple."

"I told Angela she could have it. She's my guest."

"Do you like red or green apples?" Edward asked from the sofa.

Rosalie walked over to him, standing behind the sofa.

"I like fuji apples. They're juiciest."

"Yeah."

Rosalie smiled at him. She actually smiled. Over an apple.

I went to sit next to Edward, but by the time he put his arm around me, Rosalie had already shut her bedroom door.

My dad came into my room that night as I was reading. He sat at the end of the bed near my feet and brought up Rosalie again. "She's-" he started but stopped. "Her dad, he up and left. He never looked back."

Sitting up, I dropped my book to my lap. "I don't get why that's my fault. What does that have to do with me?"

"It isn't your fault, Bella. You have me in your life. Do you see?"

"No."

He rubbed hard over his eyes. "It's just a reaction. Things will get better for her and she'll open up."

I wanted to say that maybe I didn't want her to open up. Even if she started to like me, there was no guarantee that I would ever like her. I didn't say any of that. All I said was, "Okay."

He seemed satisfied with that and I realized the problem with parents. First, they didn't think you knew anything when you really did, and second, when they wanted you to know something, they thought you understood perfectly when you really didn't.

The truth was, I wished Rosalie's dad was around so she could go live with him.

~15~

The next evening our strange family of four sat together in the living room watching a news story about a local eight-year-old girl from a town thirty miles away who was kidnapped right outside her house. Her mother saw her from the window one second, and the next time she looked, all she could see was an abandoned bicycle.

Mary announced that Rosalie and I would take self-defense classes. My dad had taught me a lot about self-defense, but he agreed that professional training was important.

Even as Rosalie drove me to and from the next town over—fifteen minutes each way—neither of us spoke the entire ride. For five days this went on and it was so frustrating that my hands were fists and my face was tense by the last day.

"You know," I said to her, getting out of the car when we got home. "I never did anything to you!" I slammed her car door.

"Be careful," she said, and still angry I didn't walk with her into our house; I went over to Edward's.

"Try to attack me," I told him in his entry way.

He shut the door. "What?"

"Try to grab me from behind."

When he did I spun around using a new move on him and it made him let go with an "Ow!" even though I didn't even elbow him my hardest.

"See how that works?"

He laughed, throwing an arm over my shoulder, guiding me to his room.

"So you be sweet to me. Or else."

"I'm always sweet." He gave me a crooked-smile close to my face.

"No, you aren't."

"You know what to do to keep me sweet." His smile turned evil. He was talking about me putting my hand down his pants.

"I mean..." I sat down on his bed, eyes darting around the room. Above his desk he had this _Reservoir Dogs_ poster, but all it was, was an ear with a string of blood dripping down. It was framed, though, so I guessed he really liked it. "Don't look at Rosalie anymore."

"I don't look at Rosalie."

He was still standing by his door; I could tell even with my eyes aimed at my lap.

"I don't," he said, coming closer, sitting next to me. "Or if I do it's only because I'm trying to figure her out. She never says anything."

"She talks to you."

"Hardly."

"When I leave, she gets to stay. With you."

"Not with me." He picked up my hand and put it in his lap, not the playful way like when he pressed my hand to his jeans, giving me a not so subtle hint, but in a different way, holding my fingers like they were delicate creatures, like they might run away or break if he wasn't careful. "She's like your sister, right? What do you think I'm going to do with her?"

"What _are_ you going to do with her?"

"Nothing."

"Promise?" I looked up at him even though it was hard. He kissed me.

"Promise," he said, still kissing me, moving my lips along with the word, and we both lowered to our sides, scooting up toward the top of the bed.

His hands and lips roamed over me until my tank top was on the floor and my shorts were coming down, and he said, "When you're around, you're all I see." He dropped my shorts on top of my shirt.

"What about when I'm not around?"

"When you're not around, I hate it." He kissed my stomach, and up, up, to my chest, and over my bra, and I'd have believed anything he said just then. Anything at all.

His hand slipped between my legs. "How about now?" He opened his mouth on my breast and pressed with his tongue and then I knew. I would let him. Besides, he wouldn't be with me much longer, but he was with me now, and I wanted this. I wanted this before next year.

"Show me," he said.

Inside my panties I guided his fingers where they felt best. Then I let go, let it be all Edward.

"Softer," I whispered when he got too rough, and he lightened his touch.

I arched my back, clutching his arm, turning my face to his shoulder, hiding from the world as I felt. I just felt.

And then I lay against him and he put his arms around me and kissed my head.

"Bella, I've been-" he took a nervous shake of a breath "-there's only been you."

He turned me around to my back so we were face to face. "Has there only been me?"

I nodded, my fingers skimming his cheek. I'd never even kissed anyone else.

"You're leaving again soon."

"Two weeks," I said.

"Will you save it for me? When you're ready, can I be your first?"

"If I can be yours."

He nodded, and tears sprung to my eyes. They didn't leak out, but I knew he saw them, his gaze passing back and forth over my eyes, and this time he didn't tell me not to cry.

He squeezed me, his head on my chest.

~15~

Mary, Rosalie, Angela, and Edward were all in my driveway as my dad and I got ready to leave for the airport. Mary and Angela both hugged me. Rosalie lifted her hand in a kind of wave, biting on the side of her lip, looking diagonally at the ground. I didn't want to leave Edward again and I told him so as I stood on my tiptoes, reaching around his neck. His hug was so tight, lifting me off the ground. "We'll see each other next June."

When he put me down, I landed on his shoes. Bending to my ear, he reminded me he'd wait, and then kissed my earlobe, giving me chills.

Was this love?

Was it love if I couldn't decide who I would miss more, my dad or Edward?

And who was I crying for when I hid my face on the airplane? My dad, or Edward?

Both.

But Edward was the one I dreamed of.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading, reviewing, tweeting and rec'ing!

Happy Peace Day!

Seventeen is next, and last. :)


	4. Seventeen

On a Limb

~Seventeen~

With a teary hug and an "I'll miss you," my mom stuck a one hundred dollar bill in my hand just before I boarded my plane for a one-way trip. She had a lot more money to throw around now that she'd been promoted. It was the promotion that had sent me packing. I was perfectly OK with moving back to California. Even if I took my dad and Edward out of the equation, I always felt like I belonged there more than in Arizona. The tanktop days and sweater nights, the trees, the birds, the creek, the air, the smallest town ever next to bigger towns with everything you could need. My mom had moved from local sales to international sales, a position that would involve frequent travels out of the country. She thought about not accepting the position as I still had a year and a half left of high school. I easily said that I would not hold her back and offered to move in with my dad so she could "find fulfillment," words I'd heard her say through many of their arguments. In March I moved back to my father's house. Next door to Edward.

I hadn't seen Edward since I was fifteen.

I'd written him an email the year before to tell him I wasn't coming back for the summer, that I would be traveling Europe with my mom instead.

She had put major pressure on, pulled the "you're growing up and away" card, and cleared it with my dad as an educational, cultural experience for me. I hadn't put up much of a fight. There was a part of me that really wanted to go, a part of me was even excited.

The email Edward had sent back was: _All summer?_

I answered:_ All summer._ That part, I wasn't excited for.

He hadn't replied. The night before our flight, lights off in my room, I called him. He was quiet, as silent as Rosalie. One word answers and that sort of thing.

"Are you mad at me?" I asked into darkness. Sometimes, when I heard his voice in the dark like this, it was as if he was right next to me, talking right into my ear. If only I could feel his breath.

"No." I heard his breath come out with the word.

"You're never this quiet."

He didn't answer.

"We're leaving tomorrow."

Nothing.

"Well, at least I won't have to see Rosalie." I tried to make a joke.

Again, he didn't say anything.

"Edward?"

"Yeah, well, I'm glad you can get something positive from this."

I walked over to my wall and leaned against it. "It isn't my fault."

"I know."

Silence lasted between us long enough for me to chew on a nail, split it, and tear a part of it off. Maybe if I told him about it, he'd start bugging me about biting my nails. Anything would've been better than all this quiet.

"I gotta go," he said.

My heart sped. I didn't know when I'd get to talk to him next.

"Wait. Say something first. Talk to me."

"Why? What's there to say? What I say doesn't matter, does it?"

"Just, give me your voice. What you say always matters."

I closed my eyes and waited for his voice. I waited, and waited.

"Read me something from one of your stories."

"No."

My heartbeat picked up a little just with that one word. If only he would keep talking.

"Please?"

"Not right now, Bella."

I opened my eyes. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"Bella..."

That was okay. Hearing him say my name twice in a row was good, and hearing him take a breath.

"You don't want to know what I'm thinking right now."

Sliding down the wall, I tried to still the quiver in my chin. "Yes, I do."

"One year is one thing, right? Two years? Two fucking years?"

I pulled my legs to my chest. "No." A tear spilled and then another one. "Not two years. One year already passed. Just one more year, okay? One more." My voice was quivering and cracking, my nose was running. I wiped it. He was too silent again.

"Edward. Edward? Please."

"Please, what? Wait for you? To maybe come next year or maybe not? What, Bella? Please, what?"

I was shaking my head even if he couldn't see me. "Just forget it, then. Forget it."

"People think I'm a fucking monk, you know?"

"Who _cares_ what people think?"

"I'm not living. I'm not even living. I'm only waiting. And for what? I don't even know what I'm waiting for anymore."

My stomach tightened up. As tight as a fist.

Wiping my face dry, I moved to sit down on my bed. There were no more tears. Sad wasn't what I was feeling any longer. All the muscles in my face tensed. I could feel my skin stretching.

"Well, live, Edward. Don't let me hold you back from living. Who am I anyway? Right? Who? Nobody, obviously. You don't even know. Is that right?"

"Bella..."

My name was not enough that time. I clicked _end call_. And then I stared at my phone.

I recognized that argument. It was like when my parents argued over where to put the sofa. Edward and I weren't just arguing about Europe. It was so much more than that. It was all the waiting. All the in-between. We were great when we were together, but when I did the math on my fingers, we would have been together six months out of almost forty by the time I'd see him next. What was that?

Like the dryer tumbling, clothing spinning and dropping, I was cycling, too. I wasn't angry anymore. The anger left with the click of that button. Sadness circled around again. Crawling toward my pillow, I cried—tears dripping over sheets—for something I couldn't even really name. I understood what Edward had meant when he'd said, "For what?" He didn't mean me, exactly. Although I was part of it.

You know what it is, you know what it _feels_ like. But you can't name it.

Maybe it was simply life. Edward was angry at life. I was crying over life.

Maybe I should've told him I loved him. Maybe then he would have known what he was waiting for. But he hadn't said it to me, and my friends told me, they said that if the girl says it first, she scares the boy away.

Turning onto my back, I held my phone above my face, typing, "I love you."

I stared at the words until all they were were words. I didn't press send.

I scrolled through my pictures to one of Edward and me from the summer before—one he'd taken, holding the phone out far in front of him. You could see the tree trunk behind us, and actual small leaves that looked really big in one corner. I typed: "Remember." And I sent it, tears rolling. I turned over and fell asleep with a wet face, and my phone in my hand.

I went to Europe with my mom.

We climbed the Eiffel Tower, took a boat ride along the Seine. We saw the Italian Ruins, listened to guitar-playing on the Spanish Steps at night, even saw a bride and groom getting pictures taken there in the day. It was beautiful. I loved the cobblestone streets and the people walking everywhere. The smiles. The arguing we came across—women with long brown hair, men walking after them or away from them—even those fights were beautiful. I thought that someday I could live in Italy.

My mom and I would sit in outdoor cafes, watching the people, talking for them, making up scenes that cracked us up. There was passion and drama everywhere. Maybe it was Italy or maybe it was just in our heads.

I thought about Edward a lot. I thought about him in quiet, romantic places and in busy, dirty places. I thought about him when some guy flirted with me in Italian, and then when he found out I didn't speak Italian, he flirted with me in English. I wondered if Edward had thought of me, too.

I emailed Edward when I got home. I told him that I would definitely be back the next summer. No question.

The email bounced back.

~17~

School was out for Spring Break when I returned to California, so I had time to get reacquainted with life in town before heading straight to school. It was a rainy spring—floods happening in the nearby towns, levees breaking. Mud all over our yard. In our house.

I helped Mary mop the floors.

Rosalie was away at college. I didn't have to worry about seeing her until summer.

My first night back, I arrived in town pretty late. I slipped through the sliding glass door to look up at the tree. Our tree. The lower branches had been removed; there was no way to climb up. With my head tilted skyward, I just stood there, reminiscing—birds, hands, kisses, arguments.

Rain sprinkled down.

Moving closer, I reached up to rub over where one of my climbing limbs used to grow.

Turning to head back into the house, I noticed shoe marks in the mud. Maybe Edward had been here recently. Maybe doing the same thing. Looking up. Remembering.

I followed the tracks to the back of the Cullen house.

I hadn't heard from Edward. Not by phone, not by email. My heart drummed nerves at the thought of seeing him. I tiptoed around.

They were on a canopied porch swing that was perched between two big bushes. And they were all over each other. Hands moving fast, girl and boy traded moans. I covered my ears, stunned by what I was seeing. It didn't register to me to stop looking, to turn around and walk away. The girl, with a knee bent upwards, and Edward between her legs, saw me first.

"Who are you?" She pushed at Edward and he turned around. Heavy-lidded eyes that widened. A panting chest.

"Bella?" Too out of breath.

_Too out of breath._

I shook my head.

"What're - what are you doing here?"

This was when air had weight.

It was so heavy my knees were weak. If there'd been wind it would've knocked me over.

"I don't know." And at that moment, I didn't know. Why was I standing there, hair getting wetter and wetter, watching Edward make out with someone who wasn't me? Some pretty, tiny girl with doe-eyes, and a dress, and short, fun hair. He could wrap his arms all the way around her. She was still holding on to his shirt.

I turned around, squishing through mud back to my own house.

I left my shoes on the porch.

"Edward didn't know I was coming back," I told my dad, accusing.

He was on the sofa, relaxing in front of a movie with Mary. Unrelaxing, he sat forward when he heard my tone. "His parents said they wanted him to be surprised, knowing how much he thought of you."

"Well, he was surprised," I said under my breath, heading for my old room, my new room. I closed my door. "It seems he wasn't thinking of me at all," I said to my childhood walls, the walls that held so many of my best memories. My first kiss memories, my first love memories. But the bad ones, too. The fighting. The divorce. And here was one more. Not learning, not being told, that Edward had a girlfriend, but witnessing it in all its body against body, lips against lips, hands under shirts glory.

Was he in love?

There were mud splotches at the bottom of my jeans.

~17~

In the morning as I sat in the living room with my bowl of cereal, Edward knocked on the back sliding glass door.

I stared at him through the glass and then slid the door open and stared some more. His shoulders were wider, his face more chiseled. His eyebrows were tight. And even if he looked a little different, he didn't look like someone else's Edward.

I forced myself to look away, behind him at our old tree.

"What happened to the tree?"

He turned, following my gaze. "Your dad's gardeners cut it up." He turned back to me. "They'll grow back." He rubbed his fingers over his lips two times. I remembered the touch of his lips. "The branches."

I looked down, touching my lips. Did he remember mine?

"Can we talk?"

I brought him to my messy room, clothes falling out of suitcases instead of in drawers. I didn't close the door. He did.

Neither of us said anything so I broke the silence, just got it out there, what I'd been thinking since I'd found Edward with that girl the night before.

"You didn't keep your promise to me, did you?"

He stared at me. I closed my eyes.

"Did you?"

"Bella, we haven't seen each other in almost two years."

I opened my eyes and nodded, my hand on my chest, moving up toward my throat where I held on.

"I meant it when I said it, but I thought- I thought-"

"Don't."

He shook his head, his hand now on his forehead.

"I meant it when we made that promise. When I said it, I _meant_ it."

"So, apparently, as long as you mean the promise when you say it, it makes no difference whether or not you keep it." A burn rose to my eyes, tears threatening, blurring. I clenched my jaw and that was the extent of it. I would not let the tears out.

"Bella." His hand came to my face, his thumb running along the bone underneath my eye, making it harder for me to keep my tears back.

His touch, I'd missed it so much more than I'd known.

_Don't let go_, I thought, but still, I whispered, "No." More to myself than to him. I would not cry. Not in front of him. He withdrew his hand. "I guess I pretty much figured anyway, after what happened the last time we talked. But I thought. I just thought, maybe..."

"Didn't you... I mean, didn't you date anyone else?"

"Yeah. I did. I dated. But-" No longer able to look at him I moved over to the window and looked out. It was our other neighbor on this side of the house, not the Cullens. He was out mowing the lawn, grass that reached his knees. The mower almost seemed to be ironing it flat rather than cutting it. "When it came down to it, I turned them down. I made a promise to a boy. And to myself."

"Really?" His voice was deeper than before. And closer. He was right behind me now. I turned around and saw the beginning of something in his eyes that started out with narrowed brows and ended up resembling hunger.

I swallowed and nodded.

The hunger darkened into more and he looked like he was about to kiss me.

I recognized that look.

He'd better not even try it.

"I have a girlfriend. I have a girlfriend."

Of course I already had that impression, so he must have been reminding himself. I wondered who he'd told her I was. Just some girl? Just a neighbor who comes and goes?

"Well, you'd better go find her, because I know that look on your face and you're _this_ close to getting yourself in trouble with two girls." I pinched my thumb and forefinger together like a kissing couple, didn't bother leaving even an eighth of an inch between my fingers. I dropped my hand to my side.

"I'm sorry," he said.

And he didn't leave.

"I can't believe you're here." His fingers brushed down my arm until he clasped my hand, like he wasn't aware of his actions. I remembered this feeling, the way his simple touch could make me shiver when I wasn't even cold. "Living here."

I could've sworn his eyes were wet. I would've bet my life on it. But in the next blink, they were dry again.

His chest was right in front of me, broader than before. I wanted to put my head against it, feel his fingers in my hair. I lifted my eyes to his face and he was looking down at our hands. He let go, and I was left with a coldness that didn't feel nearly as good.

"You should go find your girlfriend." I wished he would've said something then. Something like:_ I'm ending it_. But that didn't come.

All he said was, "Come on, Bella."

"Come on, what?"

"Don't be like this. You're here. I'm here. Be my friend."

I was so used to hearing him say _Be my girlfriend,_ but I'd never heard this from him before. Friend.

I was starting a new high school in a few days, I could use a friend, so I nodded. But I didn't promise.

~17~

The high school was in the same town where Rosalie and I had taken our self-defense classes. Through golden-brown foothills dribbling trees, I drove myself there in a truck my dad had bought me.

Most of the kids I'd known before were there, but they took about one-twentieth of the junior and senior classes combined. Angela welcomed me back right away, introducing me to her new best friend Lauren. I tried not to be jealous. I had no right to be. Making other friends seemed easy anyway. People wanted to meet the new girl, especially the boys.

The boys loved my truck while the girls with their petite cars wondered how I climbed in and out of it.

Sometimes I would look around for Edward during lunch, over where the seniors hung out. Other times I didn't even think of him.

One Saturday, Angela and I walked to the restaurant-bar in town. It was a warm day for April, a shorts and tanktop night where each breeze was like a welcomed whisper. It blew little wisps of hair at my neck under my ponytail, tickling me.

I tucked Angela's bra strap under her tank as she ordered her burger at the counter. A large family had taken over the whole center of the restaurant with pushed-together tables so we headed to a small booth by a window.

I did my best not to notice Edward and his group across the dining room from us, but they wouldn't let me.

"You can sit over here," Riley said, from one table behind Edward's. They were too big of a group and took up three different booths back to back along the wall.

"Yeah," said Edward, "sit over here." He waved one arm while the other arm rested over Alice's shoulders. She said hi as we approached. I waved to her.

We joined Riley's table, the only one with open seats. Angela scooted in next to Ben as I slid next to Riley.

"Thanks," I said.

"No prob."

Riley and I shared English and Geometry together. He'd made me laugh out of control one day in English when Mr. Banner tried to make him look stupid by throwing an easy question at him. Riley had been talking, so Mr. Banner turned and asked him, "Who is Atticus Finch?"

"Gregory Peck," Riley said in the most serious tone, and that set me off, covering my mouth, trying to hide it. I couldn't stop, though, because the answer was so ridiculous and Mr. Banner actually _believed_ Riley thought that.

"Have you done any of the assigned reading?"

Riley picked up the book from his desk, flipped through the pages and said, "I thought it was a movie."

The whole class laughed at that one.

"If you'd like to make a joke of my class, Mr. Biers, there's the door."

I thought it was funny the way teachers wanted you to address them as Mr. or Mrs. out of respect, but whenever they addressed a student by Mr. or Miss it was usually in a condescending way.

Across from Riley and me, Angela and Ben were in some conversation that didn't seem to be much more than breaths. I knew Angela was in heaven right now the way she always talked about Ben. Whatever he'd just said as he pushed his glasses higher on his nose made Angela laugh. Her laugh was loud and cackley and with the way Ben smiled, I thought he probably liked her just as much as she liked him.

Riley brought his arm around me and his lips to my ear. "We should go out sometime."

"Bella!" Edward said, and I stretched my neck to see him over Angela and Ben. He stood up, no longer touching Alice. "Catch this."

He tossed a fry at me, and I bit at it but it landed on my eye. He tossed another one I couldn't catch. I laughed. He laughed. And even from across this distance, it was like it was only Edward and me. That was, until Riley started laughing, too.

I turned to him, almost shocked that he was there—Riley and his laughing blue eyes.

"Will you?" he asked, his laugh mellowing into a smile. "Go out with me sometime?"

I lifted one shoulder. "Sure." I aimed my smile down at the table.

Riley nudged my arm and as I looked up, I involuntarily glanced across at Edward, whose gaze was still on me until our eyes met and he looked away.

~17~

Riley was not a soft kisser. His kisses were rough, his tongue sharp. It took some getting used to when he first kissed me on my doorstep, dropping me off after the movie. His kisses told me he wanted more than I was ready to give. I put my hands on his face and slowed my lips, forcing his to slow, too. That was better.

Still, after each date, each kiss demanded more than the last.

Two weeks after we started dating, he took me to junior prom. Afterwards we were in his car, hidden when he unzipped the back of my dress, pulled the top of it down and snuck his hand under my bra as he kissed my jaw.

"I want you," he said.

I pushed him away. "Not yet."

I thought about it in my room that night. I decided I'd wait. But when he brought me into his room, onto his bed to watch a movie the next weekend, he kissed me throughout the whole thing. When he got my shirt off and his lips touched my breasts, and his hand slid into my panties, and when he rolled a condom on, I didn't stop him.

He wasn't as rough at sex as he was at kissing. Not the first time, especially.

He didn't like to talk afterwards. He liked to sleep.

"You always want to talk so much," he said, closing his eyes.

We were on his bed again. On the days we were together, we always ended up on his bed.

I shook his shoulder. "Talk to me," I said, fake-whining.

He laughed and opened his eyes. "About what? What is there to talk about after what we just did? We said it all already, didn't we?"

"Why is the sky blue?"

"Sleep." He put his hand over my eyes.

"Is it really blue, or do we just think it's blue because it's been programmed into our minds since birth?"

"We'll talk about mind control in thirty minutes. Thirty."

"I have to be home by one."

He checked his bedside clock. "That gives us over an hour. To sleep."

I rolled to my back and stared at the ceiling. A few minutes of ceiling watching went by before he picked up my hand, placing it flat between his palms. "Okay, you want to talk? What's up with you and Edward?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's kind of like, you know, when he's around... I'm not."

I turned my head toward him. "Riley. No. We're-we've known each other since we were kids."

His hands rubbed mine. "So, is it like a brother-sister thing?"

"No," I said, maybe too fast. I slowed down. "Not exactly. Not like that."

He let go of my hand. "You have... history or something?"

"Yeah. Yes."

"Doesn't seem like there's much historical about it." He rolled over, his back to me.

Nothing more was said. And when I closed my eyes, it wasn't Riley I thought of.

~17~

Two Saturdays back, Edward had caught me staring up at our tree. "Can't climb it anymore," I'd said, blocking the sun from my eyes.

Without answering, he'd gone away and come back with a ladder, situating it up against the tree, testing it for support, signaling with an arm for me to go ahead, as if he was some nobleman who said things like, "M'lady."

Edward hadn't followed me up that day, but he had joined me a few times since.

The day after Riley had asked me about Edward, I climbed the ladder up the tree to think about him, Edward. And he, Edward, came up shortly after.

We were sitting on different limbs across from each other. We never talked about Alice or Riley when we were up in the tree, so I was a little surprised when he said, "You and Riley still together?"

I looked at my hands.

"He's cool. I hear his brother grows weed in their backyard."

"In the garage. He showed me."

"It's true?" Edward laughed. "Does he smoke it?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"We don't do everything together, not like when you and me were-" I looked at him and stopped. "But he probably does. Who doesn't around here, right? And with easy access..."

It went quiet, no sound but the leaves shaking. Not even a bird chirped. I shifted on my branch, my fingernail between my teeth.

Just to fill the silence I asked him if he still wrote. I already knew the answer.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little notebook. He handed it to me. I flipped through the pages, seeing his handwriting all over the place, on just about every page. I got to the first blank page and a miniature pen holding the spot fell out, bouncing off branches, landing on the ground. He said he'd get it later, his hand motioning for me to give him the notebook back.

"Does Alice read it?" I thought that since he'd brought up Riley, Alice was an acceptable subject, too.

"Nobody reads my stuff. Ever." Tucking the notebook into his back pocket, he looked directly into my eyes, both of us, of course, knowing that when you added it all up, I'd read a lot of his writing, and what he'd really meant to say was, "Nobody but you has read my stuff."

"I feel kind of caged up here with you."

"Why? Should I go?"

"No, I mean. I just miss how free it used to be with us. Up here."

Not a muscle in his body moved. Not a nod or a blink, nothing.

"Just because you have a girlfriend and I have a boyfriend, does that mean we're not allowed to touch?"

He reached out and touched the back of my hand that held the branch.

My eyes began to sting. "No, it's that for the first time, we never hugged when I got back here and that just feels so wrong. I mean, doesn't it?"

Without answering, he moved over to my branch, leaned back against the trunk, and pulled me toward him. I stopped midway. One more tug on my arm and I relented, resting my head on his chest, giving all of myself over to him, rising and falling with his breath. But I felt too much. Way too much. I was all filled up with Edward. His breathing. His heartbeat.

"You were far away when you first got back. Because of - because of me. And Alice." His voice echoed through his chest.

Too close to tears, feeling something I never felt when I was with Riley or anyone else, I'd answered my own question. As long as we had other people in our lives, Edward and I shouldn't touch. I pulled away and climbed down the tree, down the ladder.

~17~

Rosalie had moved back in for the summer. It had been my job to vacuum her room and put fresh sheets on her bed. "Hospital corners," Mary had said in a sing-song way, dragging out the last word, as she poked her head into the room.

"I know. I know."

She came over and helped. "It's the way my mom showed me how to do them. It just stuck. Some things just stick." She smiled at me, pulling her side of the sheet tight.

My dad didn't seem like a hospital-corner kind of person. He was more like a wrinkly, loose-sheet kind of person. But Mary wasn't completely hospital-cornery either. They did these silly, ridiculous things together when they thought nobody was paying attention. Like when my dad buzzed his hair all off, she called him Mr. Bigglesworth for a month. And at night, if Mary went to bed first, she'd say, "Say goodnight, Gracie," making my dad say the woman's line, and he would. He'd say, "Goodnight, Gracie." And in the morning's she'd say, "Tell me you love me, Jack." And he'd say "I love you, Jack."

It made me laugh, but when either of them looked at me, I stuck a finger in my mouth and made a gag face at them.

Mary said, "She's here!" when Rosalie drove up and we went out to meet her in the driveway. She hugged all of us. Yes, all of us. Including me. It was a timid, loose hug, but it happened, and when she pulled away, she smiled.

I gaped.

Last time we said goodbye, she'd stood on the driveway giving a wave, eyes averted.

I knocked on her bedroom door that night as she unpacked. She welcomed me in.

"What changed?" I asked, sitting on her bed.

"Don't tell my mom." She brought a finger to her lips and lowered her voice. "I'm moving in with my boyfriend when I go back in the fall." She smiled at the finish.

"I meant what changed with me."

"Oh." She sat with me on the bed. "Grew up."

"I grew up?"

"No, I did."

I sat there staring at her, sort of expecting an apology. Waiting for it. It didn't come.

"You have hospital corners," I said, and she rolled her eyes.

Because Rosalie couldn't decide what to wear, and then when she did, it needed ironing, we were late for church. We sat in the very last row. The place looked strange from way back there. I had to strain to hear the pastor.

Rosalie nudged my shoulder and pointed to the back of the pew right in front of her. I heard her laugh a little and she said into my ear, "Someone has an admirer."

There, carved into the wood was my name.

"Unless you did it yourself," she said, before her mother shushed her and Rosalie looked straight ahead like she'd never said a word or noticed a thing.

I couldn't stop staring at my name, and my heart wouldn't stop hopping around inside my chest. I knew, or at least I thought I knew, I was pretty sure I knew who had carved my name. But when? How long ago?

~17~

The county fair always began the second week in June, and ended with a fireworks show two weeks later. A huge group of us planned to meet there on opening night, including Alice and Edward.

I took Riley's hand as soon as I saw Edward, and then, realizing what I'd done, I wanted to drop it, but of course, I couldn't. So I loosened my fingers, hoping Riley would let go. He held tighter as Edward stepped closer. And as I looked around for Alice I discovered that she wasn't there. It was just Edward. Alone. I caught his eye, and he looked away fast, sliding his hand through his hair. I saw his chest rise and fall like he took a deep breath. I couldn't stop feeling Riley's hand, his fingers feeling so big in between mine that my fingers were starting to ache. That was how it seemed just then, anyway. Although we'd held hands in the past without that problem.

I was sweating under my hair and my armpits and behind my knees. We had these little paper fans that did no good, but we kept flapping them at our faces anyway.

"It's hot," I said, pulling my hair up into a ponytail.

Angela took some ice from her cup and rubbed it on the back of my neck, and then turned around and said, "Do me," which made the boys chuckle.

We ate all the junk food we could and rode rides until it was time to sit down to eat more junk food for dinner. We had corndogs and pizza slices and coke. Angela, Lauren and I tried to be a little healthy with our corn on a cob on a stick, only it was seeping with butter, so that didn't work.

Left-handed Riley was to the right of me; our elbows kept hitting as we ate, as if in battle. He nudged me and I laughed, catching Edward's eye from across the table. He was staring at me, not smiling. My smile started to fall into a frown. He looked sad.

"What's wrong?" I mouthed at him. "Alice?"

"Not Alice," he mouthed back.

Through the rest of dinner, I couldn't keep my glances from landing on Edward, and every time, even if he tried to hide it by averting his eyes fast, I saw him looking back at me.

I took advantage of Riley's trip to the bathroom to pull Edward aside, asking him what was really wrong.

"I'll talk to you about it later."

But his eyes were too tense, his brow too crinkled, for me to let it go. "But are you okay at least?"

He tugged on my pinky. "Later." He smiled and I could tell it was forced.

Riley returned and pulled on my arm, leading all of us back toward the midway. I kept glancing over my shoulder at Edward.

As the sky darkened, the lights were as noisy as anything else.

"Bella, hurry, there's no line!" Edward pulled me to the Ferris Wheel, handed tickets over, and we were barred in. I looked out at Riley who was frowning. No doubt he would be mad when we got off the ride.

The ride moved, lifting us slowly. "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, but he knew very well what so I didn't answer. I folded my arms across my chest and tried to show frustration in my face, a lift of my eyebrows, while I waited for his answer.

"The only way to get you alone."

"My boyfriend's down there."

We rose higher and cycled around. I lost my stomach on the descent when the ride sped some.

"And your girlfriend is... somewhere."

"I broke up with her."

I looked at him.

"I wanted you to know." He picked up my hand and toyed with my fingers.

"I hope you didn't break up with her because of me. Or for me. I still have a boyfriend. Or did you forget?"

He let go of my hand. "I didn't forget. How can I?"

"What were you thinking? You practically kidnapped me."

"I didn't kidnap you." He scoffed. "You could've gotten away if you really wanted to. You didn't even resist for a second. I felt your hand hold mine back, Bella. And I just wanted to get you alone for a second."

"Why here?"

He tilted his head to look at me. "I don't know why here. I didn't plan it. I swear. But I couldn't take it anymore. I just had to. Because I can't stop-" he looked away and his voice lowered "- thinking about you."

My lip quivered, my eyes watering. "Well, you have to." My voice cracked in a way you just can't help. "You just have to because I'm with Riley. You could've broken up with Alice anytime before Riley, but you didn't."

"I couldn't just drop her, Bella. It wasn't like that. I didn't go out with her thinking, 'Just until Bella gets back,' you know. You were gone. And, you're... what? You're telling me I'm just imagining the way you look at me? I'm imagining the other day in the tree? I felt you, Bella. Are you going to tell me that when you're with him, you're only thinking about him?"

"It's none of your business what I do when I'm with him. And now is just too late. So you have to stop thinking about me." But my voice quivered, my innermost thoughts shaking it up, thinking, _Don't stop. Don't stop thinking of me._

He gripped the bar in front of us. "How long is this ride, anyway?"

My lips tightened. I glared at him. "You're such a jerk." I tried to scoot away from him, but couldn't. The metal edge of the carriage dug into my hip.

We stopped near the top. It might've been romantic at another time in our lives, all the sparkling lights below, the breeze and the slow quiet from way up here, while everything below us was oppressive heat and loud and fast.

"I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm just trying to..." He rubbed his hand down his face.

"Trying to what?"

The ride started moving at a slow pace until it paused again, us at the very top.

He stared straight ahead, at nothing, because the only thing straight ahead was sky. "Be me."

"Yeah? And who is that?"

He faced me again. "I don't know what I'm doing, okay? But I can't - I can't get you out of my mind. I can't. It doesn't work." He put his hand over mine on the safety bar. He stared into me as he leaned closer, so slow I barely saw him moving, and then his face was so close, our noses an inch apart, maybe less.

Closer he came, the sides of our noses touching. I couldn't take my eyes off his. My lips quivered.

"Don't kiss me," I whispered, but I didn't move away from him, his breath mixing with mine and our lips weren't touching, but I didn't want either of us to move.

The ride bumped and my lips almost brushed his. I could feel them. _Kiss me_. My hand on the side of his face, I kept him where he was, my fingertips moving back and forth over his cheek. It was rough, scruffier than I'd ever felt. His eyes closed as soon as my fingers met his face. He tilted his head so our noses weren't in the way anymore, our lips even closer.

"Don't kiss me, Edward."

His hand came to my face, too, holding. "I won't," he said against my lips, brushing. My stomach flipped. But it wasn't kissing. It wasn't.

Breath from his mouth heated me.

I wrapped my other hand around his wrist. My breath shuddered. I could almost cry. I was on the verge.

"Do you love him?"

_No, I love you_, I could've said, but I didn't answer.

"Do you think about me when you're with him?"

"Yes." It was hardly even a whisper.

"Break it off with him," he said, and every word was another brush of the lips. "If it's true. If you think about me when you're with him, break it off so I can kiss you like never before."

"Like you kissed her?"

"No." He shook his head, his forehead on mine, his eyes on mine. "Like I kiss you."

The ride started to move; we were descending. Edward didn't take his hand off my face, keeping his stare on me until we were in sight of the people below us, and he let go and we faced straight ahead like nothing happened at all. But my heart wasn't fooled, pounding, and when the ride lowered faster, my stomach jumped, though maybe this time the jump wasn't because of the ride. Maybe it was because Edward swept his finger over the back of my hand.

We were at the bottom, the bar unlocked and he lifted it up.

"I love you," he said, without looking at me, but he squeezed my hand and then walked straight down the stairs into the crowd. My heart might have stopped and taken all my breath with it. I sat there, frozen, watching him walk off, watching him disappear into the crowd until the carnival guy reminded me my ride was over.

I let everyone else wonder and speculate about where Edward had wandered off to, but I knew. He'd left.

"What was that?" Riley asked when I stepped toward him, a game booth buzzing and blinking behind him. Balloons being popped by darts.

"I - we..."

"Yeah." He nodded and walked away. I followed him down the game aisle, past the souvenir booths, and out to the parking lot.

In his car he didn't start it up. "What were you doing back there with him?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Do you know anything? Because I know something. I know I didn't hop on a ride with some chick while you stood there watching."

I took a breath. "I didn't know that was going to happen."

"What did happen?"

"Nothing. He..."

"He wants you. It's obvious. Do you want him?"

I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say because the answer was yes.

"I knew that if he got you alone and said the right thing you'd fall for it."

My eyes shut for a second or two. I didn't tell him about all the time I'd spent in the tree alone with Edward. "Do you love me, Riley?"

"What?"

"Because you've never said it. So do you?"

"We've only been going out for two months. How could I know yet?"

"Love is the kind of thing you know. You feel it in your bones. Am I in your bones?"

He looked down at his steering wheel or his dashboard.

"When I'm not around, do you wish I was?"

"Do you think any of this makes what you did tonight right?"

"No." I shook my head. "It doesn't. And I'm sorry."

He started the car and pulled off the fairgrounds. "Whatever. You were nothing but a convenience anyway."

I looked out my window at the nighttime carnival falling farther and farther away, the blinking lights looking obnoxious.

Riley and I didn't speak the whole ride home through the foothills. He turned the music way up, all the windows down. I wrapped my ponytail in a bun to keep it from slapping my face. When he pulled up in front of my house I started to get out, but he took my arm.

"I didn't mean that. About you being a convenience."

"Okay."

I waited to see if he would say anything else, and when he didn't, for some unknown reason I said, "Say goodnight, Gracie."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Is that some way of saying _the end_?"

"Guess so."

"All right then. The end."

In the house I knocked on Rosalie's door. She invited me in, and I went to sit on her unmade bed.

"No more hospital corners," she said.

I asked her if she'd ever dated someone while being in love with someone else.

"No."

I looked down. I didn't know what I was hoping for. Some kind of kinship, maybe. Some kind of, "I've been in your shoes before." Some kind of understanding. _You're not a bad person._

"But I've never been in love with anyone before now," she said.

"Edward, he-"

"You love him." She shrugged her shoulders like it was the simplest thing.

"He's inside me. He's been in me since I was eleven. But I dated other people anyway. And with Riley, I-"

"Bella." She sat down next to me. "You're 're supposed to, like, walk around like you don't know where you're going. Like a zombie looking for brains or like Frankenstein with your arms out straight in front of you."

"You make me sound like an idiot."

We both laughed a little.

"It's not _supposed_ to be easy. You're not just supposed to know things. You should hear what some of my friends have done. Or even look at what I did when _I_ was seventeen... to you."

I wanted to tell her that I understood why she treated me like that, but I didn't. Maybe I never would understand. And maybe Riley wouldn't understand why I did what I did, and maybe Alice would never understand why Edward did what he did. Maybe understanding something didn't always have to happen.

"Maybe I'm just a terrible and selfish person."

"If you were a terrible and selfish person, you wouldn't care. The fact that you're sitting here right now worrying over if you're a terrible person or not is proof that you're not."

I hugged her, not caring if she would hug me back. But she did. And she said, "You smell like the fair. Go take a shower."

I showered the fair away. And Riley. And Alice.

Late that night as I lay in the dark I wondered why I hadn't heard from Edward yet. And then I remembered that I'd never told him that I would break up with Riley. The last thing I remembered saying about Riley was that I _wasn't_ breaking up with him.

I sent Edward a text: _It's over_.

When several minutes went by without a reply I thought that maybe Edward had misunderstood my text. What if he thought that I'd meant it was over with him, and not that it was over with Riley?

I was about to send a clarification text when there was a tap on my window, Edward peeking through. I lifted it.

"You broke up?"

I nodded.

Edward took hold of my shoulders through the window. Standing like this, me inside, and him outside, we were the same height. Pulling me closer, my stomach pressing against the windowsill, he kissed me on the cheek, just a simple kiss like when we were eleven. Then, as his fingers drifted from my shoulders up my neck in a way that made goosebumps rise over my arms, he kept giving me these simple kisses all over my face and at the edge of my ear and my eyelids. They were the kinds of kisses that didn't ask for anything in return; they were the kind that, without words, spoke of love. Just like he'd promised on the Ferris Wheel, he was kissing me like never before.

That was when I knew he really loved me.

"Let me in?"

I moved out of his way and he crawled over the windowsill.

I looked up at him, and for the first time in a long time I was free to just look because he no longer belonged to someone else. I reached around his neck and pulled him down to me and gave him the hug that we should've shared the night I moved back. I felt his sigh on my shoulder and his arms around me, and I held him like I'd never let go if I didn't have to. After a while he lifted me off the ground and turned me around, and it was slow.

"Be my girl," he said, and my feet weren't even back on the ground yet. I nodded against his shoulder. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes." Could he tell my heart was racing? Did he know it was beating for him?

He put me down, then, and I took his hand, leading him to my bed. We lay side by side facing each other.

He kissed me whisper-light. "I love you, Bella."

"Took you long enough."

"I've probably loved you since that second I saw up your dress when you almost fell out of the tree." He fisted his hand around mine, bringing my knuckles to his lips.

"You told me the wrong underwear color."

"On purpose. I remember thinking they matched the robin's eggs."

I bent my head to his chest, trying to keep my laugh quiet. "I would've _killed_ you if I'd known."

"I think I knew that. I had to lie. For my own safety. And for yours. You would've rather fallen twenty feet than have me see your underwear." His hand held the back of my head and he pressed a kiss to the top of it.

"Bella? Look at me."

I did.

Still holding my head he moved in close, his lips on mine, soft again. Softer than when we were eleven, softer than ever before, he kissed me. When I felt the touch of his tongue, there was that familiar stirring deep inside, the one it seemed only Edward could bring out. He pulled away, his hand drifting from my head to my face.

"Was that you who carved my name in the back of that pew at the church?"

"You saw it?" His index finger followed the line of my cheek bone. "You wanted to run away there once, remember?"

"I've tried not to remember."

"I carved a different letter every time I sat in that spot. I didn't even write the letters in the right order."

"They looked in the right order."

"No, I mean, first the 'a,' then later the 'e,' then the 'b,' and then each 'l'. We didn't always sit in the same pews so it took me like four months to finish it."

"How'd you do it without getting caught?"

"When the preacher prayed, I just put my head down on the back of the pew in front of me, like I was praying, too."

"When did you carve it?"

He brought his arm around me and I rested against his shoulder. "Last year. When you didn't come back."

I lifted my head to look at him, and I touched his face. "You were sad?"

"After that email you sent me," he said, taking my hand from his cheek to kiss my fingertips, "I didn't know when you'd be back. If you'd ever be back."

"Maybe if you hadn't changed your email address you would've known."

He dropped my hand, pulling me back down, tucking my head against his chest, his hand on my head, fingers sliding through my hair, where they rested. "I'm sorry about that. I was.. I wasn't myself. I was kind of wrecked. More torn up than I thought a guy should be."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I don't know. Because... you were out there doing things, seeing things, and I was here, doing nothing, going nowhere. I had to do something."

"I hate what happened between us. I hated it when it was happening and I hate it now."

"I know. Me, too." He kissed my forehead. "Me, too."

We didn't do anything more than kiss and maybe some roaming hands, but it was enough to just know we were together and to connect with our lips and just savor it all. Edward slept in my bed all night, his forehead resting on mine, his arm tangling mine, his hand holding mine. And my fingers didn't ache. He slept in his clothes, and it wasn't until the earliest morning hours when they started to come off.

Edward's shirt went first, between kisses, and I watched it go over his head. I looked at him, his chest, his shoulders, his arms, and I saw that somewhere along the line, I'd missed him turning into a man. Maybe because we'd been kids together, and maybe because deep inside, I still felt like a kid, but when I looked at him with his shirt off, saw the way his muscles flexed, and the way his eyes bore into mine, I didn't feel like a kid at all. I ran my fingertips up and down his arm and back up to his shoulder and without expecting it, I started tearing up.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I can't believe this is happening." And that meant so much more than it seemed, because yes, I couldn't believe that Edward and I were about to make love, but also that we were growing up, becoming adults, and that this was a real, maybe even forever thing. All of that was so hard to believe. Like a dream.

"Neither can I," he said, pushing back at my hair and dropping his head to give my forehead a kiss.

"We aren't kids anymore," I said.

"Nope."

"This love is real."

"More real than anything." He smiled. And then we kissed, and we wouldn't stop, not ever. Things would happen in between, sure, life, but our lips would always reconnect.

I let my hand run down his stomach to his pants where I pressed and rubbed and he pushed into my hand just like he did so long ago, and it must've reminded him, too, because he said, "You were the first person to ever touch me."

"Did you like it back then, really? The first time when I had no idea what to do?" I was still rubbing when I asked this and he was fumbling to get his pants unbuttoned so I could slip my hand inside, and when my hand was in and around, he answered all shaky. "You know I did." And he paused for just a second as I quickened my touch. "I never forgot it." He groaned and then whispered, his lips to my temple. "I would've walked around with your hand in my pants twenty-four-seven if I could have."

He laughed before stilling my hand to take off my clothes. His fingers drifted up both my sides, pushing at my shirt, lifting it off. Then he traced the outline of my bra along the skin of my breasts. His lips followed his touch before he sat me up and reached around my back, unhooking it. I pushed the straps off my arms and let the bra fall away.

Naked only from the waist up, he was still in his opened jeans when he kissed me all down my body and pulled my panties over the tips of my toes. He looked me over in a way nobody had looked at me before, like his eyes wanted to remember me like this for the rest of time. And then his lips took over, tasting and devouring, too.

He was hard between my legs and almost pressing in when he stopped.

"Oh, god, wait, are you on anything?"

"What?" My mind wasn't working quite right.

"Do I need a condom?"

I nodded.

Edward got up, and I watched him naked as he took his wallet from his pants and pulled out a square. He looked at me with sad eyes, almost like he was apologizing for having it. But that thought just drifted away so fast, like a storm had moved through and swiped it up, because Edward was on top of me again, his lips open on mine, his tongue finding mine. I lifted my hips and he went deep inside.

At first we moved fast. So fast it would end soon so I whispered for him to slow down, and he stopped completely. I wanted it never to end.

He took my hands and placed them by my head and wove his fingers with mine. As he started moving again he pushed against my hands, squeezing my fingers, pulling. That push and pull of my hands was almost as good as the real thing. Our palms attached like that began to sweat.

I needed to hold him close as the intensity between us grew. It was hard to keep quiet, though I had to with my dad and stepmom sleeping so close by. I wriggled my fingers free and wrapped my arms around him, pressing him closer against me, raising my legs. _Could we get any closer than this?_ Was that possible?

My breaths were too loud and some moans tried to escape so I bit on his shoulder just a little which brought a grunt sound from him. I had to cover my own mouth because it was just too much, and too hard not to let it out. And it felt like nothing else. Nothing else.

"I love you," I told him in a heavy whisper.

"I love you," he said. "I've never said that to anyone else, you know?" And he kissed all over my face until I laughed and he gave me a laughing, "Shh."

He rolled off of me and went to get rid of the condom.

When he slipped back in next to me, he said, "Bella?" And he was on his side while I was flat on my back and he was looking at me, his hand brushing down my arm, and then up to my shoulder and down again.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry." His eyes were wet like he was about to cry.

"About what?"

"A lot of things. But right now I mean Alice."

"Why?" A little bit of panic shot through me like maybe he'd lied, maybe he hadn't broken up with her.

"The way you found us the night you got back. And after you came back, you were all I could think about, even when I was with Alice, but I didn't break it off with her because there was just... there was confusion, you know? I wasn't sure. I thought that I - but the thing is, I didn't. I never loved her. Not like I love you."

"How long were you together?"

"Like six months."

I nodded.

"And then we started going up to the tree again. Even after just those few times, whenever I was with Alice I felt like—maybe this is crazy—but it was kind of like you were the one I was betraying."

My stomach dropped. Hearing he'd felt that way while I never knew, it hurt my insides.

"I felt a little betrayed when I found you two together that night on the swing. But it wasn't the real you betraying me, it was the fantasy you. The fantasy that I would come back here and everything would be the same and we would just pick up where we left off. Then it was, poof. Reality."

"Yeah, I get that. Fuck, I hated that night. Seeing that look on your face. It took everything in me not to go after you. If I had found you with some guy like that I probably would've kicked his ass."

"You were always nice to Riley."

He took a deep breath and said, "It wasn't easy."

"What was it that made you pull me onto the Ferris Wheel like that?"

He rolled to his back, taking me with him.

"The last time in the tree, when I held you in my arms..." His other arm came over the top of me and held tight. "I didn't want to let you go. I knew then that the reason I couldn't stop thinking about you and the reason I felt like I was doing you wrong by being with Alice was that I still loved you. And I just had to end it with her. Right away." He closed his eyes up tight. "I didn't mean to do that at the fair tonight. Seeing you, all day, not being able to even really talk to you. I just acted. I just did it. I had to be with you. If you wanted me. And when you told me I was too late up there-"

"I've always wanted you."

He rolled us both over, dropping his head to my chest, kissing me there again and again. When he looked up, there were tears.

"Don't cry," I said, wiping his face. But I was crying, too.

There is probably nothing better than feeling loved by the person you love, except perhaps seeing that person cry because of how _much_ he loves you.

It was still early June, but we knew how summers could fly by. We were experts on that. And at the end of the summer, he was the one who would be leaving, going off to college while I finished my last year of high school.

The sky that summer was the kind of clear you could get lost in, the kind of cloudless sky that showed you just how forever the world was. And, with Edward, I welcomed that forever.

We walked down to the creek and climbed up the ladder into the tree a lot during our last few months of freedom. Our kissing got out of control late one night, and we almost made love on a branch, me on top of Edward's lap. But it scared us both the way the branch swayed too much, like it might break. Laughing, we climbed down.

On the ground, under the tree, facing away from the house, with his shirt off and his pants partway down, and my shirt pushed up, his lips on my breast, we were hidden by night and under my skirt as we finished what we'd started in the tree.

"You're the one who's leaving now," I said moving off of him, lying on my back, my head on his arm. I looked for the moon through the leaves.

"Only three hours away."

The moon was like a fingernail clipping, and hard to see from where we lay.

In a raspy voice he said, "Someday when we're both done with college, we'll get a house together that has a big tree in the back and we'll climb its branches until we're sixty. And nobody will ever cut them."

"You think about being together until we're sixty?"

He turned to his side to look down at me. "I guess I do."

I took his hand. "How about you don't leave? Ever."

His fingers grasped mine.

"Are we going to be okay?"

I saw his throat bob with his swallow and I brought my finger there.

"Yes." He kissed my lips. "Yes, we are."

Tears slid from the corners of my eyes.

"I'll come home next weekend. Okay?"

"But you can't do that every weekend."

"No, but I can do it next weekend."

"Okay."

He kissed me deep.

And when he pulled away, we held each other, body to body, limb to limb. And we didn't talk about saying goodbye because it wasn't time for that yet. We had the whole night.

And that night—under the moon and stars, our tree's branches swaying above us, where we dreamed about a life together through old age—was our piece of forever.

Forever. It was like we'd taken it right from the sky and filled our pockets with it.

It was ours. It belonged to us.


End file.
